Join the Engineering Leisure Class

[nawhite]

https://medium.com/@chrisloer/join-the-engineering-leisure-class-b3083c09a78e

Saw this on Hacker News https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9506512

It mentions MMM and tries (rather unsuccessfully by the comments) to convince Silicon Valley Engineers to save up and quit then do what they want. Here's hoping some more people listen.

[ChrisLoer]

Hey, I got some positive comments too! A few people directly told me something along the lines of "I was thinking of quitting my job, this helps"... to which I thought "oh my god, why am I telling people what to do on the Internet?". As someone who wasn't even a registered member of these forums, I hope I didn't go too far by invoking Mustachianism in the article! Pointing here is just so much easier than trying to start the "you don't need to spend as much as you think" argument from scratch.

[bacchi]

Silly Valley must have the most insufferable market-disrupting app developers in the world.

[Kriegsspiel]

That is probably true. Don't they have almost all the app developers in the world, period?

[zolotiyeruki]

Wow, lots of cynics in that discussion, although they do raise some good points about how to occupy your time.  It seems like some of them tried ER, but didn't like it, and others think that "retired" means "doing nothing meaningful."

[Scandium]

Wow, such a forest of straw men to wade through in the comments!

I like the one who said it would require "living on 300 Sq ft, and never owning a new car", which are clearly equal deprivations..

[bacchi]

Wow, such a forest of straw men to wade through in the comments!

I like the one who said it would require "living on 300 Sq ft, and never owning a new car", which are clearly equal deprivations..

Never owning a new car? Gasp!

There's also "Working on your own car" meant as something that no sane person would ever enjoy doing.

Jfc, working around software people just depresses me.

[tbone]

The morons on that thread who think they can't make over 100k outside of SF/Bay area are either incompetent or just stupid.  They are losing tons of money to housing cost and therefore aren't making what they think they are.  There are tech jobs in every major city and tons of remote.  If you can't make over 100k in Austin, Denver, Seattle, Chicago, Atlanta, etc then you can't compete outside of SF where 100k is like $70 in the rest of the country.  HN is such a kids forum and this thread is a great illustration.

[Scandium]

Wow, such a forest of straw men to wade through in the comments!

I like the one who said it would require "living on 300 Sq ft, and never owning a new car", which are clearly equal deprivations..

Never owning a new car? Gasp!

There's also "Working on your own car" meant as something that no sane person would ever enjoy doing.

Jfc, working around software people just depresses me.

There were also a lot of
"I make more per hour in my day job than doing chores. "
Which might be true for some, but as I'm salaried mowing my own lawn on Sunday does not mean I'm (directly) making less money at my job. And I don't really think it's worth it even if I did work that time and hoped for a bigger raise.

[gimp]

https://medium.com/@chrisloer/join-the-engineering-leisure-class-b3083c09a78e

Saw this on Hacker News https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9506512

It mentions MMM and tries (rather unsuccessfully by the comments) to convince Silicon Valley Engineers to save up and quit then do what they want. Here's hoping some more people listen.

I dunno about the rest of you folks who live here in SV/SF bay area, but in my experience, most engineers who saved up enough to quit at 35 and do whatever they want would very shortly find themselves working somewhere else, because that's what they want. Quitting is just a nice long vacation before finding a new problem to be excited about.

At 55 instead of 35, maybe a different story. But a lot of my coworkers are around that age, and most of them aren't working because they desperately need money.

[bacchi]

I dunno about the rest of you folks who live here in SV/SF bay area, but in my experience, most engineers who saved up enough to quit at 35 and do whatever they want would very shortly find themselves working somewhere else, because that's what they want. Quitting is just a nice long vacation before finding a new problem to be excited about.

At 55 instead of 35, maybe a different story. But a lot of my coworkers are around that age, and most of them aren't working because they desperately need money.

Right, that was the point of the article, except for the "somewhere else" bit.

Engineers earn more money than we need, and the world is full of interesting problems that don’t promise a financial return. Why are the overwhelming majority of us still working for a paycheck?

(emphasis added)

So cash out at 35 and "[w]ork on your idea full time without pay" because your expenses are met from investments. It seems that those HN engineers are more worried about the next killer haircut app rather than an interesting problem that doesn't promise VC funding and an equity event.